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Carolina
and Kentucky haven't played a game against each other in which at least one
team wasn't ranked in over 50 years.

That's the
kind of pedigree that defines one of the marquee nonconference series in all of
college basketball. The two schools played for 12 straight years at the start
of the 2000s, but took a one-year break last season as conference expansion
caused some havoc with nonconference scheduling issues. Now the series is back
on, with a game at the Smith Center on Saturday and the return game at Rupp
Arena next season.

"I think
it's a great series for both schools and our fans as well as college basketball
fans period," Roy Williams said when the series was renewed a year ago. "North
Carolina and Kentucky have great traditions and, regardless of who you pull
for, fans mark this as a must-see game on the schedule."

He's been
proven correct this week, as ESPN started promoting the game over a week before
tipoff.

The teams
first met in 1924, as Carolina--then known as the White Phantoms--took a 41-20
win in the Southern Conference tournament in Atlanta in what would eventually
be a Helms Foundation title season. That particular event--which played to
sellout crowds of 5,000 per session--was notable because it ran concurrently
with a Bible conference for Baptist ministers. A handful of ministers snuck
over to the Atlanta Auditorium for the four-day event. Spotted by the
ever-watchful Atlanta press crew, the next day's paper noted, "We have decided
to withhold their names and not give them away to their flocks back home."

The two
programs played just sporadically for the next nearly 40 years. Dean Smith took
control of the Tar Heels before the 1961-62 season. His first year was marked
by scheduling restrictions, as Carolina was only allowed to play two
nonconference games. The next year, with those limitations relaxed, Smith
fielded a call from Kentucky head coach Adolph Rupp, who was eager to "help"
the second-year head coach by setting up a series. Rupp, who by that point had
won four national championships at UK, explained to Smith that he would be
delighted to play a ten-game series, but that of course, given the relative
profile of the programs, six games would be played in Lexington.

The first
matchup would be in December of 1962 and would, of course, take place in
Kentucky. It was expected to be little more than a formality. The Wildcats were
coming off a regional final appearance and 23-3 record, and featured consensus
All-America Cotton Nash.

It was the
first glimmer of what Smith was building at Carolina. The Tar Heels used a
box-and-one defense on Nash, with Yogi Poteet harassing the star man-to-man all
over the floor.

"When Coach Smith designed that
gameplan with the box-in-one against Cotton Nash, you could see he had the
capability to be a great coach," said Peppy Callahan. "You knew that when he
started bringing in players, it could be special."

The strategy limited Nash to
3-of-12 from the field and just 12 points. Poteet actually outscored the
superstar, tallying 17 points, while Larry Brown added 19 and Billy Cunningham
13. Carolina escaped with a 68-66 victory at Memorial Coliseum, a place where
the Wildcats won nearly 90 percent of their games from 1950-1976.

"Coach looked at Yogi Poteet and
said, 'Keep Nash from getting the ball,'" said Bill Brown. "Sure enough, that's
what he did. After about five minutes Nash couldn't get the ball, and he
basically took himself out of the game. We beat them on their home court, and
when it was over, we looked at each other like, 'This guy knows what he is
doing.' We got more and more confident."

Smith, assistant coach Ken Rosemond
and trainer John Lacey were so excited after the victory they walked all the
way from Memorial Coliseum to the team hotel. The team spent the night in
Lexington, where Brown, Cunningham and Charlie Shaffer spent some quality time
on the phone describing the game to friends and family back home.

The more recent Carolina-Kentucky
series hasn't featured any walks back to the hotel, but it has included
similarly close games. Three of the last four meetings have been decided by two
points or less, and the one lone exception was a 76-69 decision won by Kentucky
in the 2011 NCAA Tournament in a content that was a one-point game with 90
seconds left.

That's indicative of how close the
series has been overall. The previous 12-game set ended with each side winning
six games. Carolina took five in a row from 2004-08, but has beaten the
Wildcats just once (a 75-73 win at the Smith Center in December of 2010) since
then.